


the planets bend between us

by dollfacerobot



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Autumn, Blind Date, Dinner Party, Exes Set up On Blind Date, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Nostalgia, Open but Optimistic Ending, Past Relationship(s), References to College/University AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27563068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollfacerobot/pseuds/dollfacerobot
Summary: It’s been over two years since Sansa and Daenerys broke up, and both have put the past behind them (or so they think). When common acquaintances unknowingly set them up at a dinner party, they are forced to confront their unresolved feelings.
Relationships: Sansa Stark/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 12
Kudos: 48





	the planets bend between us

**Author's Note:**

> Another fic brought to you mostly by Taylor Swift and clowning with the incomparable @aflashofgreen! This was written for [Sansa Sapphic Fest](https://sansasource.tumblr.com/tagged/sapphicsansafest) hosted by @sansasource on Tumblr. I apologize that this isn't beta read, I will do better next time.
> 
> The title is from the Snow Patrol song of the same name, which I remember being popular when I joined Tumblr around 2010. I know. If you're interested, my writing playlist for the fic can be found [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1t23Y5Tuz4pRhVp0iX6lSG?si=m6f2Rk4WQuungZ-obvafUw) on Spotify.
> 
> _you should think about the consequence of your magnetic field being a little too strong..._
> 
> — Taylor Swift, _Gorgeous_
> 
> _You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you._
> 
> — Heraclitus

&

It was exactly seven p.m. when Sansa stepped onto the doorstep of the Tarth-Hunt house, expertly balanced the green tin box that held her signature lemon cakes in her left hand, and rang the doorbell. The jingle was followed by a surprised metal clang from the right side of the house, where the kitchen was, and a succession of quick steps before Hyle opened the door with a big grin and greeted her, accompanied by the guitar riffs of a tame indie rock song.

Sansa smirked back and patted his back as they said hello and hugged. Unlike her, or Brienne, for that matter, he never hesitated to show affection, something Sansa had learned to appreciate during her past few years of relative loneliness.

“I have to run back to the kitchen really quickly”, he said as they stepped inside. It was warm and cozy after being outside in the cold autumn air. “I left Brienne to fend for herself, and it’s really a two-person-job.” Nevertheless, he took her coat and promised to treat the lemon cakes with all the respect they deserved.

Meanwhile, Sansa was looking around for a sign of the other dinner guests. Laughter sounded from the living room. Three voices, from what she could make out, so everyone else was already there. Had her clock stopped working, or was everyone else simply even more punctual than she was? She thought it was rude to arrive _on time_ at a dinner party, so what about being early?

Brienne waved at her from the kitchen, her hands covered in flour. She was wearing one of her fancy pantsuits and a shrill red kitchen apron that matched her lipstick.

“Just go ahead, we’ll be right there!” Hunt called as he jogged towards the kitchen, where he expertly swooped by Brienne towards the stove.

Left to her own devices, Sansa sighed and moved towards the living room. As she had foreseen, doubt had crept in on the twenty-steps-walk from the cab to the front door. Why had she agreed to this again? She hadn’t been on a blind date since her early teens, a disastrous experience that had not just ended with an ice cream store owner in tears over her date’s rude and disruptive behavior, but that date had also convinced Sansa that boys really didn’t do it for her.

It had been more than a year since Sansa had been on any date, period. The last one had been a perfectly pleasant affair with a woman seven years older than herself. Sadly, however, what started as light flirtation over their starters had turned into Sansa, drunk, confessing in tears that she wasn’t over her previous relationship and “never would be”. She shuddered at the memory. At least the date had ended on a positive note, with the two of them bonding over unresolved feelings and many martinis. 

Agreeing to a blind date at a dinner party of all places was not something Sansa would have done even a few months ago. She had just begun to get her life back together and had started feeling comfortable with her job and her living situation.

And yet. As she caught her reflection in the hallway mirror, she reminded herself of the small spark of excitement and even hope she had felt when Brienne had mentioned her “gorgeous” client and new friend, and how well she could picture the two of them together. Even an hour ago, Sansa had felt the excitement and had tried out three different hair styles before settling on a simple side braid hairstyle with most of her long hair down. 

So she pushed the doubt aside and walked towards the source of music and laughter. Closest to the door stood Podrick, Brienne’s assistant and close friend, and a pretty girl with glasses and an abundance of freckles who Sansa assumed was his date. They both smiled at her in greeting and she smiled back.

But then the sight of a small figure with long silvery hair and violet cat eyes turned Sansa’s heart to stone in her chest.

The woman standing in the middle of the room was Dany.

As they stared at each other, Sansa registered that naturally, Dany had placed herself in the exact middle of the Persian rug, and that even the arrangement of armchairs at the back of the room seemed to be framing her in perfect symmetry. 

Dany looked about as flabbergasted as she felt, and didn’t move an inch. Her eyes still had this gravity about them that could swallow you up immediately and entirely, and Sansa felt their relentless tug.

Of all possible thoughts, it was Marcel Mauss’ concept of the _total social fact_ that suddenly came to her: “an event or activity that has implications throughout society in all its spheres: the economic, legal, political, and religious.” This - the event of standing opposite the person she had, at one point in time, considered the best thing that had ever happened to her - was one of those.

Sansa’s heart was hammering in her chest. She wasn’t sure how much time passed.

It was Brienne who saved her. “Sansa, this is Daenerys - Dany, this is Sansa”, she said from behind her, coming into view, and before Sansa could even think about it or register what was happening, Dany and her were both smiling and shaking hands like the politest of strangers.

All she saw now were violet eyes staring back into hers like they were trapped on a carousel, and Sansa had no clue what to do or say next, so she said “Nice to meet you” and put her hand carefully back in its place at her side, making sure it didn’t shake, even though sparks were dancing in her palm and on her fingers. She had not felt the touch of their hands itself, nor the pressure of skin on skin, only the absence of the touch afterwards.

Dany had that slightly deranged look on her face where her eyes were really wide and smiling, a look that other people thought was charming, but Sansa knew it meant that she was actually freaking out. “Call me Dany”, she said, slightly high-pitched.

“Alright.” Sansa looked away. She felt light-headed and breathless, as if she had just sprinted to the bus stop (and then gotten on a bus without checking if it was the right one…)

Hyle brought out glasses of champagne, and they toasted. She was glad for the movement, the chaos of voices, a moment where no one would pay close attention to her losing it. Except, of course...

In the corner of her eye, Dany was still looking at her.

  
  


&

What did it say about a friendship, Sansa wondered a little later, as she stared her mirror image straight in the eye, if your current best friends unknowingly set you up with your ex?

(This was one of her new habits: hard truths in the mirror.)

She lifted her left eyebrow as high as she could, then scrunched up her face into a grimace.

It probably meant, she imagined mirror Sansa answering in her best drawling lecturer voice (the one she used only on bad days when visitors at the museum asked stupid questions, then challenged her) that despite working with Hyle for over a year and meeting him and Brienne almost every week or so for drinks or picnics, and even though she considered them her closest friends at this point, she had jumped through all _imaginable_ hoops in order to avoid eeever talking about said ex in the first place.

And here she was, hiding in the bathroom, while Dany was probably getting a headstart on the white wine.

Well done, Sansa.

Of course she remembered the inevitable conversation about her single status and past relationships. The three of them had been sitting in the park watching a child chase after a golden retriever. Even though it had been a cloudy day, Sansa had been wearing sunglasses - a hangover from emptying a cheap bottle of wine almost entirely on her own the night before - and clutching a water bottle like her life was depending on it. Hyle had been talking about one of their youth adventures - back when Brienne had what he called “a chip on her shoulder” and hadn’t even looked at him, no matter how hard he tried to impress her. Brienne had punched him in the shoulder playfully, but her smile revealed how much she enjoyed her husband’s silly adoration. At some point, the conversation had stirred towards Sansa.

“I had my first real relationship in college”, she had said. Easy, like talking about someone else. “A girl I met in class.” 

There it had been, the moment to word-vomit all the details she ached to talk about, from how Dany had casually leaned over in class to ask her for a pen to how they had been “study buddies” at first, before making out at a party a few weeks later when Sansa had almost resolved to start avoiding her before the situation could turn any more awkward. Even now, the well-known Oasis song (not Wonderwall) made her sigh wistfully before she switched to another station. It had been a truly perfect moment, even though a few chaotic weeks had followed because Dany hadn’t been out to her friends and family, and also not to herself. But it had been the start of a relationship that had, besides its last few months, been truly wonderful.

“We were together for most of college. But it ended when I graduated”, she had said instead, and changed the topic by cheering on the child that had finally managed to catch up to the dog, and seemed to be trying to mount it like a riding horse.

(Hard truth: you’ll never have proper friends if you don’t open up, stupid.)

The mirror’s resentful eyes followed her as she dried her hands on the plush pink towel and left the bathroom. 

&

As Sansa picked at the delicious mushroom risotto Hyle had abandoned her for earlier and tried to breathe and drink at a normal velocity, she couldn’t help but steal glances at Dany. Because of course she couldn’t.

Like herself, Dany still seemed to like braided hairstyles, and was wearing a low and loose three-strand braid today. Her face still had a sculpted look about it, especially her sharp, rosy cheeks, even more so than two years ago. Her champagne cashmere dress looked very soft.

She imagined laughing and explaining to everyone ‘Look, this is funny. We actually do know each other...’ but she knew the words that had to follow such a statement could never leave her lips and so she awkwardly clattered with her cutlery and tried not to drink too quickly.

Sansa had told herself for a while now that she felt ready to see Dany again. She had envisioned their eventual reencounter and even played out scenarios in her head: the train station or the coffee shop, or maybe a festive setting, like Christmas shopping. In these scenarios, the encounter snuck up on her while she was distracted, and it felt like seeing an old friend. She imagined herself in a bubbly mood, asking questions and laughing without worry or expectation. Maybe it was a good hair day, too. 

Maybe there was a fucking ring on her finger.

She forced herself to eat more, because if she had learned anything in 28 years, it was to avoid drinking on an empty stomach. Luckily, Podrick’s date Jenny was keeping the table busy with a workplace anecdote - she worked at a wild park out of town. Sansa had a bad feeling about the fate of the child protagonist of the anecdote, who was knocking angrily at the glass in the reptile section in order to rouse some movement, but at least imitating everyone’s occasional “ooh”s and “oh no”s was all that was required of her for the moment. 

Something else she pondered over in the meantime: Dany’s gravitational field. 

They used to joke about it often, “back in the day”, after Sansa had first told her about her discovery: that Dany’s surroundings aligned around her so that she always seemed to be at the center, whether it was glassware on a table, shadows in a half-lit room or the branches of trees on a walk in the park. She could lose herself in memories of Dany posing under streetlights, oblivious to the universe pointing at her in the form of twigs, road signs and home decor. Even now, a large wooden owl figure that loomed on a nearby shelf with open wings gave Dany the illusion of having wings herself, at least from where Sansa sat. 

Dany used to delight in hearing about it. Not out of vanity. It was something they shared that nobody else seemed to see. To notice and tell her meant: _I love you_. 

But they weren’t in college anymore, and there were no more rainy walks on study breaks, no more hairstyle tryouts and presentation trials at their dorm rooms sitting on the floor, on Sansa’s fluffy light blue carpet or Dany’s Japanese cushions. There was no more arguing with excessive gesturing and red faces, no more hand squeezing when it was tough and no more being the obnoxious happy couple at parties. Mostly, there was a memory of those few dark weeks that marked the end of their time together, and Sansa’s chest still tightened if she thought of them for a second too long, and so she didn’t.

Instead, she told Jenny, who asked, about her job at the museum, with occasional interruptions and praise from Hyle. Sansa was glad she had a job she was happy to talk about, especially since her research grant had been approved just four months before. Sometimes, life threw you a rope, or a thread, in this case. Unlike Hyle, who spent most of his time giving guided tours on the museum’s public collection of historical textiles (especially popular: the collection informally dubbed “Royal Gowns” and the three rooms that used to be called the “oriental” collection, and that now suffered name changes every few years while the museum’s board bid its time with the reconceptualization budget), Sansa only gave four guided tours a week, and got to spend most of her time in the archive section, where she meticulously recorded, studied and preserved French Renaissance tapestries that were not yet approved for public viewing. She hoped to work her way through the collection by the end of the year and begin earnest work on a monograph by the following. She hadn’t told anyone yet that she planned to depart from a purely technical study in weaving patterns and techniques into a contextualization of the depicted symbols and scenes of myths and legends that had fascinated her since her childhood.

She spoke for a good while, and even when she was done, and the conversation had moved on to one of Hyle’s rather hilarious anecdotes of the strange happenings at his guided tours (where dramatic scenes such as marriage proposals, visitors wrapping themselves in precious fabrics or even sudden appearances of hidden, and occasionally dangerous, pets occurred regularly), she caught Dany looking at her in the corner of her eye.

So they sat in silent agreement not to reveal their past. It was weird that, even now, once they had exchanged that first glance, Sansa had instantly known and trusted that Dany would not reveal the lie, or rather omission of their “secret connection”. Not because she had nothing to gain from it, but because they had always sworn each other to play along, no questions asked. (An example: She could still hear herself giggling “Oh, forgive me, I’m so boy-crazy!” in a conversation with Mrs Targaryen at the first Targaryen Trains fundraiser she had been invited to, months before Dany had come out to her family.) There were few things they did - used to do - better than playing along with each other.

A little later, it was her turn to observe Dany as she spoke about her life, which, as it turned out, mostly consisted in her work on the start-up she had co-founded with her best friends a year prior. Sansa remembered Missandei and Grey Worm well. They had become a couple pretty early in college and spent endless hours with her and Dany at the library, at parties and in the park. 

She would also never forget how kind they had been to her when they had run into each other at Starbucks just two weeks after the break up, and Dany and Sansa hadn’t spoken to each other at all. 

She looked at Dany shamelessly. “The idea is that with one app, we combine offers for public transportation as well as car, scooter and bike sharing and the like... and so, when you plan your route, you will be given the cheapest, fastest and most efficient alternatives in order to go from A to B.”, Dany was explaining, and from there, the discussion turned to urban design and what a city structure not centered around individually-owned cars would even look like. Once Brienne brought in the possibility of flying cars (“Not flying cars”, she clarified right away, then hiccuped, “but you know, eventually vertical mobility could become a thing!”), Sansa knew they were well on their way to drunkenness, and she herself on the way to bravery. Or, as some called it, stupidity. 

&

They had made it to dessert, and her lemon cakes were handed around with espresso. Podric and Jenny were talking quietly, giggling from time to time. 

“Brienne has been telling me I had to meet you for ages now”, Sansa said nonchalantly to Dany. “But she never told me your name. Daenerys is such a particular name... Weird that you never mentioned it, Bri.”

“Didn’t I?” Brienne shrugged, evidently paying it no mind. 

“So is Sansa”, Dany threw in, with a pondering look on her face. “They’ve been telling me we would get along so well. I wonder why that is.” 

Sansa almost spit out her espresso.

Before anyone could answer, Dany’s cheeks turned slightly red. “I don’t mean that in a negative way, like at all”, she added quickly. “But since we don’t know each other, _you know.._.”

“I’m not offended”, Sansa said immediately. “I actually would like to know myself.”

They both looked at Brienne.

“Don’t ask me that!” she protested. “Converse between yourselves. But I think ganging up on me like this proves my intuition right.”

Hyle laughed, his mouth full of lemon cake, and Sansa wondered if something cold also slid down Dany’s back. This was the problem with inhabiting a “light and breezy” (or drunk) character: sooner or later you get stung.

&

After dessert, they left the table and Sansa fled to the bathroom once more. After giving herself a short pep talk in front of the mirror and splashing cold water in her face, she returned to find the “couples” had segregated. Brienne and Hyle were in the kitchen, not wanting to be disturbed “cleaning dishes”, and Podrick and Jenny had turned on the TV to watch a hockey match of a team they were fans of, and were discussing insider information by the couch.

So Sansa joined Dany on the terrace, armed with a new glass of white wine. Dany was sitting on the white wooden bench overlooking the row of orderly neighbor gardens with her legs stretched out before her, one foot over the other. 

She was clutching a new glass as well, sipping just a bit too quickly. With her braid loosened, wavy hair was flowing in the early autumn breeze, and she was looking out over the garden. Finally, Sansa stepped towards her, her steps crunching on the gravel. She wasn’t sure whether to sit down, but Dany slid over another inch just in case. She gave Sansa another one of her incredulous looks.

“This is crazy”, Sansa said after sitting in silence for a minute. “I don’t know what happened there.”

“I have no fucking clue”, Dany said and shrugged. “I went along with you.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time… I mean, it wasn’t an idea at all, actually. It just… happened.”

“Well, it’s kind of hilarious”, Dany said, then added: “We could probably get away with it too.”

“They probably think their plan worked. We clicked and fled their presence to be alone.” Sansa speculated, then flinched even as the words left her lips, but it was too late.

Dany didn’t answer her, but gave her a look and downed the rest of her drink. “So you’ve been well?”

“Yeah”, Sansa said, a little too quickly. “You as well?”

“Splendid.” Dany was staring at the empty glass in her hands. The word ‘splendid’ always reminded Sansa of bones for some reason, or maybe it was just an innocent bystander to a moment where either of them could, at any moment, go straight for the knife.

Still, Sansa felt she had to make an effort. “I didn’t think you’d still live here. I thought you’d go back to London.”

Why was it that even the word ‘still’ held such violent connotations when you spoke to someone you had once known? As if permanence was a sign of failure.

Dany had never made Sansa feel small once when they were together, but as strangers, that was different - or, not really strangers, but watchers lying in wait, looking for the right moment to strike.

But Dany just said, “I like it too much. Couldn’t go back.” A moment of silence passed as she seemed to formulate her thoughts. “Your job sounds like something you’ve always wanted.”

It sounded innocent enough, positive even, but for Sansa, it was the knife attack she had waited for. 

She had never known what she wanted to do with her life, she “just” loved old stories, and that wasn’t exactly something to bring to career orientation seminars. Then again, up until her last year of college, the question hadn’t really seemed pressing, since her parents left her absolute liberty and always declared they would support her no matter what. 

Unlike herself, Dany never had had much choice in her professional path. Born into the Targaryen Trains dynasty (eyeroll), it was expected of her to study something that would be of use to the family business, and so she’d studied engineering. To be fair, Dany loved engineering, and Sansa had only passed the one class they had shared and where they had met, Introduction to Quantitative Methods, because of her tutoring and occasional tinkering with Sansa’s exam papers. (At the time, she had called it ‘reparations’ for distracting Sansa too much.)

Sansa’s existential crisis hadn’t exactly broken them up, but it had been a steady companion for that last half year when things had slowly but surely dried up between them, so it was hard not to see a connection. It had come to a climax during their second Australia trip until they had, shortly after landing back in London Heathrow, broken up in a spectacular fashion, and barely spoken since.

Dany seemed to have read her thoughts, and looked at her from the side. Sansa was too much of a chicken to look back at first. “I mean that, Sansa”, she said. “I’m really glad you are doing something you love so much.” 

Sansa didn’t like how hearing her name made her feel. 

Then she did look. Oh, to fall headfirst into the abyss of those eyes. She couldn’t help herself and gave a small smile back. “You also seem pretty happy. The start-up sounds like a fantastic idea.”

Dany raised an eyebrow. “You mean, breaking ties with my family?”

“Did you?” This was news to Sansa.

“It was time.” Dany sounded and looked both determined and defeated. “You know, that part about living my life, and not theirs.” Another one of their recurring topics.

“That must have been hard”, was all Sansa managed to say. A choking thought had just returned, one that had been most acute during the weeks after their separation: that Dany would face emotional turmoil by herself, cry by herself, without Sansa by her side to hold her hand and encourage her. At the time, losing the power to influence Dany’s mood and outlook on the world for the better had terrified her completely, even more than the anger, loneliness and desperation of her own situation.

And yet, it had happened. She had let it happen. While she had been out in the world going about her own business for the past two years, Dany had done the unthinkable all by herself. 

Then again, she had done the unthinkable before, that day they had gone back to the Targaryens’ country home for the weekend to sit on her parents’ leather couch and tell them she was in love with a woman.

But Dany just nodded and smiled again. “It was. But it was worth it. I couldn’t go on as it was.”

Sansa had finished her drink as well, and they clinked their empty glasses, which was oddly fitting - they no longer needed to be cautious about bad omens and things that turned the universe against them, after all. Not when the worst had already happened.

They sat there for a good while in easy silence until Brienne stuck her head out the door to tell them it was freezing and they should come back in for shots, _now._

“We should probably get this evening behind us as fast as possible.”, Sansa said before they went in.

&

The dinner party ended two hours later after they had all started yawning like the old people they had all become. Sansa had a twitchy feeling when Dany suggested they share an uber, like she was about to lose her footing.

But so they said their good-byes to Brienne and Hyle and waved as Podrick and Jenny climbed into their own ride. At the sight of the small, tight space, Sansa felt her arm hairs stand up, full of foreboding. She wasn’t sure what would happen to her once they left the open space and entered the world of back seats, where different laws of gravity were at work.

At the same time… 

She fiddled with her phone to look up where the uber was, only to see that it had been cancelled.

“Oh well”, she said, and navigated the menu to book a new car.

Dany was looking over her shoulder, probably on her toes in order to see anything. “We could also walk”, she suggested, “Just a bit, I mean. I feel a little drunk to get into a car anyway.”

The memory of a car trip home from a party a few years ago flashed before Sansa’s eyes. Dany, green in the face, had sworn she was fine right up until the point she had practically fallen out of the car at a red light and vomited onto the sidewalk.

Sansa put her phone away and smirked. “Well, we can’t have that. Lead the way.”

There is something unequivocally romantic about walks at night, and tonight, the stars were very bright. Their footsteps echoed on the pavement, and with their shadows aligned under the streetlights, the scene felt familiar, as if Sansa had stepped into a book of memories. They had often walked around campus at night to take a break from studying.

It was easy to fall into the same pace now, and tempting to link arms as they used to when it was chilly.

“I feel stupid”, Sansa said after a while. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll tell Brienne the truth.”

Dany nodded, her face momentarily hidden behind a misty cloud of cold breath. “Yeah, sure. I mean, it’s just a matter of time anyway… I like Brienne a lot. She seems like a great friend.”, she added.

“I’m so glad I met her and Hyle.” Sansa kicked at some pebbles in her way. They skittered along the sidewalk. “I kind of lost touch with everyone from school.” That was, perhaps, a euphemism.

“I was going to ask you about that.” Dany was looking at her again. “And your family. How’s everyone?”

“Um, really good. I live with Arya at the moment. She… is a martial arts master now.” They shared another knowing smile. “She has a studio below our apartment where she teaches girls how to give a good thrashing.”

“ _Awesome_.”

“Robb got married, Jon as well.”, Sansa added, and actually began counting family members on her fingers. “Theon is… not checking in a lot, but doing better I think. Bran actually went off to study under some guru in India. We get really nice e-mail updates from him though. And uh, Rickon just finished school and really wants to participate in that baking competition, you know, the Bake-Off. The worst is, my mother absolutely encourages it. They bake _all_ the time. Father, well. Adjusting to a life out of politics.”

“Whew. I’m glad everyone is doing okay then.” Dany sounded sincere, and Sansa believed her, even though Dany’s allergy to the Starks’ close-knit dynamic and unironic gatherings and hugs figured prominently in Sansa’s memories of their visits to her home.

Dany seemed to sense that Sansa was about to ask her the same question. “I’ve gone to grab a coffee with Viserys a couple of times, but… our lives are so different - what we want is so different. And I just keep asking myself, did I use to be like this? Always talking about money and the job. Don’t get me wrong… I love my job. I love working with my friends. But now I feel like what we’re doing could really be helpful to people...”

Sansa nodded. “I understand. But Dany, you know you were never like that.” She caught Dany’s “oh _really_?”-glance. “ _Maybe_ a little snobbish. But you always wanted to make a difference and you were always trying to find out how to go about it.”

And because nothing felt easier in that moment, she took Dany’s hand and squeezed it before letting go just as quickly. Then she looked straight ahead because she was a chicken.

“Thank you, Sansa.” It was almost a whisper against the first few drops of soft rain. “You’ve always had my back.”

They fell into silence again. If anything, Sansa ached more now than before, and words were forming on her tongue that she really didn’t want to leave her lips, words that spoke of what-ifs and regrets and many, many times dialling a phone number but never pressing “call”.

So instead she said: “I’m glad to see you. Even if it was under these weird circumstances.”

Dany gave a snort. “You can say that again... _Sansa_ -” and her change of tone made Sansa turn to look at her. 

“That’s my name”, Sansa said. 

There was a pained look, but she said nothing else, and eyes locked, they walked on until a raindrop landed squarely on Dany’s nose.

&

They took refuge under a large tree; smart for now, but eventually it would all come down on them. Something had shifted, in Sansa and between them. She’d had questions, so many questions, but that look had answered them all. But what was her own answer?

They had walked for almost twenty minutes, enough of a distance that sharing an uber didn’t make much sense anymore with the directions they were going (as the app helpfully calculated for them). As they waited for the cars, they both confirmed that yes, they still had the same phone numbers, so getting in touch wouldn’t be a problem. They hugged good-bye quickly.

As Sansa sped away in one direction under orange autumn trees heavy with rain, the events of the evening began to settle in her slowly. She knew what had occurred had been the turning of a page and she brewed over her unfinished thoughts.

 _Never step into the same river twice_. A piece of advice she had received years ago from someone she no longer spoke to, either. It had come to fulfillment when they had decided to repeat the Australia backpacking adventure from their first year together. The trip had been a disaster from stop to finish: Sansa’s existential crisis over graduating formally in less than four weeks, almost two weeks of salmonella related suffering, getting badly sunburnt because they were carrying refillable glass bottles and had switched them out with body lotion by accident, and the plain fact that they were getting on each other’s nerves.

By the time they landed, they hadn’t spoken in almost twelve hours, and a misunderstanding over coffee orders led to a screaming match which in turn led to Sansa throwing in the unforgivable “Well thank _God_ the trip is over so we don’t have to stand each other anymore!”. Things had unravelled quickly from there, and a phone call featuring some nasty name calling the following day had confirmed the break-up. Sansa had hung up on Dany and they really hadn’t spoken since. Withdrawal symptoms and regret started plaguing her just two weeks later, but by then, Arya had spotted Dany getting cozy with another girl at the university ice cream shop.

The anger and outrage this caused kept Sansa busy for a few weeks until she had moved out of her dorm room and into the flat she would share with Robb for the next year. It was a smouldering feeling that consumed her for a good while as she ripped out the roots she -they- had grown. There is a power in leaving. She didn’t miss Dany, actually, and wouldn’t miss her. The past few months had been a _mess_ , and she should have seen the inevitable end of the relationship coming from miles ahead.

Now, in the car going back to her and Arya’s apartment, for the first time she admitted to herself that that had neither been a lie nor the truth, but something more murky and unsure. The anguish and inability to let go of the relationship she had been feeling over a period of two years since the break-up were a testament to her love’s substance, after all. Even more, now that she had seen her again, it was clear that the universe (her heart) was still pointing to Dany from all directions. 

And yet, had it been the wrong decision? There was no explanation and excuse for their months of falling out of love other than… falling out of love. And after all, neither of them had contacted the other during all this time. They hadn’t addressed this tonight, but, were they to see each other again, they likely would. Sansa imagined them in a little coffee shop she liked close to her apartment, sitting awkwardly with the mutual acknowledgement that they hadn’t fought for their relationship, and met again only by chance.

But how “by chance” was meeting again through a common friend both had known for months and months, really? Brienne, she mused, had been a planet between them, obscuring and hiding each other from view while keeping them close together for more than a year. And now that planet Brienne had moved, they had once again come into each other’s orbit. Sansa almost giggled at the stupidity of her mental gymnastics when her phone screen lit up.

It was a message from Dany, with a picture of sun-burnt, moody-looking Sansa sitting in the departure area of the Sydney airport reading on her tablet. Behind her, someone was holding an entire flock of animal balloons, two of which (a zebra and a lion) hovered directly over Sansa’s shoulders, as if posing with her and smiling at the camera. It was perfect symmetry. 

Dany’s message read: _always wanted to send you this picture. who’s the universe pointing to now?_

**Author's Note:**

> Say hi on [Tumblr](http://dollfacerobot.tumblr.com) if you like.


End file.
